Pages

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Those words have been on repeat in our house since the road trip up here, meaning, we're going on four months. There are the "Let It Go Dresses" (anything that makes Sybil feel pretty), the "pink Let It Go bike" (that she wants for her birthday), "Let It Go shoes" (that unfortunately met an untimely demise in my parents' new puppy's teeth), and anything pink that can equate in Sybil's mind to "Let It Go" (though she has been making a switch to blue in the past few days upon, I'm assuming, a realization that most Frozen things are blue.) With all of this talk of Let It Go (the simple words are overruling and supreme enough to demand capitalization), it's amazing that I haven't taken the directions to heart.

I need to let go of the weekly photos that I don't take, the blog posts that I don't write, the moments that I don't do juuust so. I need to let go of the idea that perfect will ever happen, because it won't, or that I have time to accomplish my to-do list, because I don't. I need to realize that I, as with most parents, do important work each day and make choices, most of which are forced for little peoples' survival, about what is most important and what goes to the back burner. I have to let go of the sadness that comes with saying farewell to the newborn days (does that ever fully go away?) in order to usher in the more tiring but also more rewarding days ahead. I'm pretty certain that "Let It Go" should be the motto of parents' everywhere. We do our best. We take our pictures and give out hugs and clean kitchens and march, march, march through life, trying to soak in every minute that we can while in the repetitive grind. But somewhere, sometime, our grind will slow and time will open up. And at that point I'm sure that we will have long since let go of all the floors that weren't scrubbed and piles of laundry we let wrinkle and the dinners that weren't home cooked, and we'll be sitting there trying to let go of that ache in our hearts to hear a little voice scream "Let It Goooo" just one more time.

(One day I will write a blog post full of happy moments and no wistfulness. Something about the writing experience just brings that out of me, especially at night when all those daily moments hold a rosy glow and hide their warts. Or maybe it's just the fact that the sheer act of trying to document this time is a vain attempt at scraping together all that I love and care for to hold on as tightly as possible. But there is so much happy, so much beauty. I have a baby swaddled by my side who is still so little even in all her bigness, two others passed out upstairs, too many brownies in my belly that were made with extra TLC from Sybil and Declan, and yet another episode of Gilmore Girls on TV. Life is good. Tomorrow will be good. And I need to remember that as much as I always wish I could go back to the good of yesterdays, that's simply because they were great todays. I need to enjoy my todays to the fullest, and know that with my habit of missing their goodness, I'm probably guaranteed lots more great ones ahead.)

{totally random selection of recent photos with no rhyme or reason, because hey, not letting perfect be the enemy of good.